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Friday, April 20, 2012

Frugal and Simple Laundry Week: Tips for Managing Laundry

To wrap up our Frugal and Simple Laundry Series today, I am going to be sharing just a few tips for managing your laundry. Like I have said before, laundry in our house can seem to get out of control pretty quickly....and we only have four people! Having a good routine and schedule helps me to stay on top of it and make sure my family has clean clothes that actually get put away.

When I first started working out a system for our laundry, I tried doing a laundry day. I would leave all laundry till Monday, then knock it all out in one day. Sounds great right? You only have one day of dreaded laundry and the rest of the week you don't have to think about it.

After the first week of trying this system, I quickly found it was not for us! I ended up with about 11 loads of laundry. I couldn't believe the amount of laundry we had gone through in just one week! It ended up taking me till Wednesday to finally get it all finished up. It was a disaster.

So I ditched that system. However, it may still work for you. If you only have 2 or 3 people in your family and don't use cloth diapers. Your laundry mountain may be a more manageable size, making it possible for you to get it all done in one day.

Here is the system we finally did settle on...

1-2 loads of laundry per day. Washed, dried, folded, and put away that same day.

I love this system. It is simple, manageable, and helps me stay on top of things.

I wash 1 load of clothing each day...
Every day I check our laundry basket to see which load (lights, whites, brights, or darks) needs to be washed that day. I try to alternate each day what load I do to make sure they all get washed in a timely manner and we don't end up with moldy clothes that have been at the bottom of the basket. Yuck!

I wash 1 load of towels or diapers each day...
I alternate every other day between towels or diapers. Since we basically us cloth everything (diapers, wipes, hand towels, kitchen towels, napkins, table cloths, and our Un-paper Towels) it is very important that I keep fresh, clean ones ready to be used.

This is basically what my schedule looks like:

Monday: Load of dark clothes. Load of sheets.Tuesday: Load of white clothes. Load of diapers.Wednesday: Load of light clothes. Load of towels.Thursday: Load of brights/dark clothes. Load of diapers.Friday: Load of white clothes. Load of towels or another load of clothes (which ever is needed more)Saturday: Load of clothing or towels. Load of diapers.Sunday: Rest :-)

As our family grows I will probably have to make some adjustments or even change my system completely. But, for now, this works perfectly!

Here are a few other laundry systems that I found that may work for your family (or even mine in the future)...

Personal Responsibility System
-As your children get older they can be responsible for washing, folding, and putting away their own laundry. Assign each child a day that is their wash day.

I think this system could be great since it teaches your child responsibility for their own clothing. They have to learn how to manage their clothing so it lasts them all week. Plus, they actually learn how to do laundry. It may take a while to train your children how to properly do their laundry. Additionally, you may have some kids who throw dirty clothes back into their drawers to avoid doing laundry.